Copyright is a brilliant system designed to incentivize the creation of new works by boxing up and destroying everything that happened in the past. Otherwise people might start questioning why they need to remake a movie that's already been remade 3 times in the last 20 years. /s

I don't think it's that infringement is good for competition, but rather patents are bad for competition. By design. Period.

So all the analogies approaching the issue backwards are ill-fitting. Bank robbers aren't good for competition, just as banks aren't bad for competition. If the banking system was so screwed up as to make robbery the most prevalent method for getting money, it wouldn't legitimize robbery, but we sure better figure out a way to fix the system that normalizes it.

I agree local loop unbundling is a better solution than running duplicate infrastructure to everyone's home. I'm not really sure how we get there from where we are now, aside from letting all the companies merge and trust-busting them in 50 years.

The FTC is still a Federal body. I'm asking if there's a viable way to address this from within a state government more attuned to the actual needs of its constituents. I'm thinking along the lines of other utilities like water, gas, electric, sewer. Can we locally regulate ISPs under similar provinces or does the FCC's mandate preempt state control?

So, with the federal regulators out of commission is there anything that can be done at the state level to extend network neutrality to consumers at a local scale? Or will the new FCC lay down the jurisdictional hammer reclassifying ISP as information service and make it untouchable by state legislature?

Maybe the best bet is to battle those same protectionist state laws and create municipal networks to force competition?

“Keeping America safe and enforcing our nation's laws in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully examine all materials entering the U.S.,” the statement said.

An "increasingly digital world" has nothing to do with the goods, materials, and persons you're supposed to be inspecting at the border. You're abusing legitimate physical authority to inspect, control, and gather travelers' intangible private information.

Are you really deciding what information is allowed into the country? Does the Government want to admit to a censorship scheme of that wide scale?

I agree with both of you, I want to hear about new probes into security but I don't need the doom and gloom preface beforehand. I'm really not sure why these broad strokes of 'everything is out to get you and nothing is safe' don't set off Tech Dirt's FUD alarms every time.

These cyber-leaks are directly cyber-responsible for cyber-loss of cyber-American cyber-lives and cyber-endangers cyber-field operatives' cyber-safety and that of their cyber-families at cyber-home. We need to cyber-find and cyber-jail these cyber-leakers as cyber-quickly as cyber-possible since that cyber-will cyber-obviously cyber-undo cyber-any cyber-harm cyber-that cyber-has cyber-occurred.

Yeah, I wanted to look at it to see if there was a reference to "intellectual property" at all. From the quotes here it looks like a slant piece trying to frame people's understanding of patents and copyright to fall under normal property laws."Google is taking people's property, your house and car could be next!"

"The bottom line is that the Copyright Office did not approach stakeholders, selectively or otherwise."

Yeah! The government shouldn't ask specific people who likely know things to come in an educate them. They should just hang around the office waiting for whatever unvetted information wafts in the window. You don't see Congress or the FCC actively asking for input when they have to make decisions on complex topics. I mean, COME ON!

Then again, the Copyright Office was supposed to be the fraking expert on Copyright, which is why they were "asked" in the first place. So I'm not sure why they needed to gather input from stakeholders at all.

They own the poles blocking public right of way and are unable or unwilling to allow others use of them. Okay, fine. Next step is local loop unbundling, how do you like them apples? And before you complain too much, remember the next option on the list to fix the god-awful "market" is splitting all you ISP and content providers in half so we can regulate the SHIT out of the common carriage sector. We're running out of options, but leaving everything as-is or allowing you to just buy up more competing companies isn't one of them.